So, installing malicious software means your information can be accessed? SHOCKING.

Man, here I was hoping helm's deep would reinvigorate LOTRO. And yes, I had even pre-ordered it.

I have been hearing that Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT are not API compatible

I don't know where you heard that. The modern app WinRT framework (not to be confused with Windows RT, the name of the ARM version of the Windows 8 OS) is completely cross-architecture, and any language you write with targeting it (HTML5+JS, C#+XAML, C++) can also be cross-architecture. Of course you can choose to do architecture-specific stuff, or reference architecture-specific libraries that would limit where your app can run, but that would be a conscious choice on your part.

I suspect you've confused the fact that Windows RT for ARM does not allow you to write or install non-Modern third-party apps, which means no desktop apps for you besides the built-in Windows stuff (notepad, desktop IE, etc) and Office. That is not related to Modern apps at all.

God only knows what Windows Phone 8 will look like

Given that Microsoft couldn't figure out resolution-independent UI for Windows 8, my completely speculative guess is that it'll be similar to the Wnidows 8 WinRT API set, but require you to build a different GUI. Kind of like how WP7 supported (mostly) the same XNA as Xbox 360 and Windows, but you still had to redo the display (and control) portion to make it work on the phone. Code is shared, but two separate and distinct binaries would need to be built to support both platforms.

But we won't know anything until Microsoft releases the WP8 SDK. Hopefully that will be today (10/26), but we'll see.

That's not normally how "lines" is interpreted. A "line" is generally expected to be the same as a "row". Each line is 4000 pixels long (well, actually 3840 pixels), but there are only 2000 (really 2160) rows. 4000 refers to the columns. I guess we could start referring to 1080p as 2K, 720p as 1.5K, and 480p as 1K, but since we already have the row-based naming convention it seems silly not to call this 2160p.

It's been done. The problem is 3D tracking. To be convincing windows you need to have parallax movement of the images, but because the monitors aren't actually far away it can only work for one person at a time. If you don't have parallax movement, you may as well just mount it as a "digital painting" rather than a faux window.

From what I can tell, to have full support across all of their portable devices, you'll need to have 3 versions of each app. One for the Windows Phone 8, one for Windows RT 8, and one for x86/x64 Windows 8. I've seen reports that RT tablets won't be able to run phone apps and phones won't be able to run RT apps so that means two ARM builds. And there are also a lot of x86 tablets in the pipeline that will be running the full x86 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 8 so you'll need to cover them, too.

It depends on how you're writing your app. If you use the HTML5+JS framework or C#, you can write platform-neutral apps that will run on x86, x64, and ARM Windows 8 machines (including RT). You of course also have the option of specifically targeting one or more platform, which is good for games, but I would expect most apps will be platform neutral

That gets you down to two platforms -- Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. The Windows Phone 8 SDK has yet to be released except to hand-picked developers under strict NDA, so nobody really knows what's in there yet. It could be binary-compatible with Windows 8. We just don't know.

Windows ME was uter crap. Actually I skipped this version because I used Win2k at the time.

ME only existed because 2k wasn't ready for the home market and they need a stop-gap. XP came a year later.

Windows ME was uter crap. Actually I skipped this version because I used Win2k at the time.

Sure, if you didn't mind not having drivers, having poor game performance (everything was still targeting win9x at the time), etc. Still, it was a solid OS.

Windows XP sucked at first. It was basicaly a slower version of Windows 200 with a Teletubbies interface

Except that XP benefited from 2k's run in order to have drivers available day 1, and was much better in terms of consumer support. There's a reason 2k Pro was not targeted to home users and XP was. That extra year and a half or so made all the difference.

Windows Vista was as shitty as ME.

Windows 7 is actualy Vista, but working.

Actually, a much more apt comparison would be Vista was 2k to 7's XP. Vista introduced a new driver model and didn't give OEMs enough time to get new drivers out (it needed to be done, but it was done poorly). Where Vista failed wasn't on the technical side of things, but on marketing. It had a significantly increased minimum hardware requirement, and for good reason. But it was just a little bit ahead of the curve and OEMs wanted to sell cheaper hardware so marketing came up with the whole "Vista Basic" thing (and they got sued for it). If you had the hardware for it, and you could tough it out for the first 3-4 months while drivers caught up, Vista was awesome. The search box on the Start menu on its own was worth the price of admission, and is what ultimately killed the Start menu entirely (user feedback indicated that nobody used the start menu for anything but searching, so no need for the menu itself anymore).

I'm definitely an old fart (when did that happen?), but I use my smartphone for smartphone stuff like apps and whatever. I guess the difference is I don't grease up my hands with butter before trying to use it, or something. I just don't get it.

Why is everybody dropping their phones? How does this happen? After years of smartphone use, and over a decade of cell phone use, I've only ever dropped one phone (an old Nokia, circa 2000; ended up with a loose battery connection that would occasionally cause dropped calls if it shifted mid-call).

Maybe rather than a case people should get the Nokia Lumia 920 and wear grippy gloves, since the 920's screen can be used with gloves on.

Don't forget the reviled "Vista Basic", allowing OEMs to install Vista on machines it was never supposed to run on. Vista was a little too far ahead of its time, as evidenced by the fact that Windows 8 and Windows Vista (Premium experience) share the exact same minimum requirements.

Still, Vista wasn't as bad as people like to pretend. A lot of the "bad" was around drivers as you mentioned, OEM issues, and behavior changes for users stuck in their ways (which usually tends to be the self-proclaimed "power users" more than "normal" users), and probably most importantly the extended development period and mostly public failure of the dev team (the ~2005 reset, for example). Judged by itself, with proper hardware and drivers, Vista was actually pretty good. Just the Start Menu search by itself was enough to make it worth it for me.

1 account/password gets me e-mail, Youtube, Picasa, Docs, IM, news, etc

To be fair, you're really kinda doing it wrong. A single "Microsoft Account" (that literally be any email account like -- mine's my gmail address) gets you access to all of Microsoft's properties -- Xbox, Zune, all the Live properties like Messenger, Bing and Bing Rewards, Skydrive, Office Online, etc. Mail through hotmail.com or live.com or outlook.com is all the same (well, I don't think hotmail.com has upgraded yet, but the others are the same -- in fact for me, outlook.com just redirects to a mail.live.com domain). You have the option to get a different address, for example if you're allergic to @hotmail.com and want to have @live.com or @outlook.com instead, but you don't have to. If you decide you do want multiples, you can create aliases (my @outlook.com address is an alias on my @gmail.com Microsoft Account). If you don't want to do aliases, you can easily change your Microsoft Account name (email address) whenever you like (have foo@hotmail.com and want it to be bar@live.com? Change it on your current account, don't just create a new account). The only difference between this and Google is that Google doesn't really give you a choice of other names. And at least with Microsoft accounts you can link them if you want. You can't link multiple gmail accounts.

With Microsoft, my IM contacts were on the Passport account, my Windows Mobile phone is on my Live account, etc.

That's your own fault for creating a new account every time you do something (I bet you have yet another account for Xbox, eh?). You know that part where is says "Login to your account or create a new account"? Yeah, you can log into your account there. You don't have to create a new account.

As a male of average height and hand size, I also prefer bigger phones. At least, bigger than the iPhone, anyway. For me, 4.3" is right around the sweet spot, but would be happy with anything from 4.0" to 4.5". 4.7-4.8" is pushing it, though my wife's HTC One X is pretty damn comfortable and not significantly wider than my HTC HD7S (mostly due to a smaller bezel). Once you get above 5.0" things start to get a bit uncomfortable for me, but aside from the Galaxy Note which is arguably a mini-tablet phones haven't yet gone above 4.8".

3.5" phones are just too damn small.

But then you all have a black mark on your record, making it harder to move teams. And compensation is directly tied to review ratings, so for the review period where you get the short straw you may get nothing -- no raise (not even cost of living/inflation), no bonus, no stock. Just an uncomfortable discussion, a bad mark on your review record that will send up a red flag to other teams, and the hope that your manager doesn't get replaced with someone else who doesn't follow the previous manager's rotation and will pigeonhole you based on your previous bad review.

Jack Welch implemented stack ranking at GE when the company was over-sized and performing poorly. It was intended to be a short-term (couple year) measure to identify and weed out underperformers. It was not intended to be a long-term business standard. Filtering out 5-20% of your work force every year is not sustainable (why do you think Microsoft complains about the lack of H1-B visas?), and the system is ripe for exploitation. Your manager exploited the system in an arguably good way (making the best of a bad situation), but plenty of managers will use stack ranking to get rid of people who are competent but have somehow rubbed the manager the wrong way, or in a misguided attempt to retain talent (give them a good review and they will leave to better things, but give them a bad review and no other team will take them and they're left with the choice of staying where they're at or leaving the company entirely), or as an exercise in empire building (make your way up the corporate ladder by bringing along people below you to push you up at the expense of others who may be more competent but less willing to play politics).

Part of the problem is that stack ranking is so pervasive in the software industry. All of the major companies do it. Smaller companies do it because the big companies do it. Every now and then you'll find someone unique like Netflix, but if you leave Microsoft for Google, or HP for Amazon, you're just going from one stack ranking system to another. The individual details may be slightly different, but the overall system is the same.

And obviously I meant a general-purpose Linux OS rather than Android or BoxeeBox since every Netflix subscriber who has wanted a Linux product has seen all the "it works on Android/BoxeeBox so it should work on Linux" posts around the net.

It works on Android/Boxee/Tivo/WDTV/other Linux-based hardware because of hardware-based DRM chips. This is why, for example, not all Android devices are supported by Netflix, or why the WDTV Live device was not supported but the WDTV Live Plus device was, or why Boxee supports Netflix on its physical hardware but did not do so in the now-dead software distribution.

Silverlight uses PlayReady DRM, which is what Netflix uses on devices without dedicated DRM hardware. PlayReady is designed to be cross-platform. The only thing stopping it from appearing on Linux is the cost of licensing PlayReady from Microsoft, building a Linux-compatible implementation (shouldn't be too difficult, as it already exists on OS X), and hooking it into Moonlight. But now Moonlight is dead, and nobody's going to pay for PlayReady licensing anyway, and even if they did it might still end up being incompatible with the GPL at some level needed to make it fully work.